1. I am grateful to Carleton Ray for pointing out the timeliness of Petruchio’s questions in this era of species extinctions and introductions. See G. C. Ray, Petruchio’s paradox: The oyster or the pearl (pp. 128–136), in J. Cracraft and F. T. Grifo, eds., The Living Planet in Crisis: Biodiversity and Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
2. C. Wistar, An account of the bones deposited, by the President, in the museum of the society, and represented in the annexed plates, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4 (1799):525–531.
3. T. Jefferson, A memoir on the discovery of certain bones of a quadruped of the clawed kind in the western part of Virginia, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4 (1799):246–260. Quotation on p. 255.
4. D. M. Raup and J. J. Sepkoski, Periodicity of extinctions in the geologic past, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, U.S.A. Physical Science 81 (1984): 801–805; D. Jablonski, Background and mass extinctions: The alternation of macroevolutionary regimes, Science 231(1986):129–133. Also see review in J. B. Harrington, Climatic change: A review of causes, Canadian Journal of Forest Research 17 (1987):1313–39.
5. D. H. Erwin, J. W. Valentine, and J. J. Sepkoski, A comparative study of diversification events: The early Paleozoic versus the Mesozoic, Evolution 41 (1987):365–389; M. Jenkins, Species extinctions (pp. 192–205), in B. Groombridge, ed., Global Biodiversity: Status of the Earth’s Living Resources (London: Chapman and Hall, 1992).
6. W. W. Alvarez, F. Asaro, and H. V. Michel, Extraterrestrial cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction, Science 208 (1980):1095–1108; R. Ganapathy, A major meteorite impact on the earth 65 million years ago: Evidence from the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary clay, Science 209 (1980):921–923.
7. R. Lewin, Mass extinctions select different victims, Science 231 (1986):219–220.
8. J. B. Pollack et al., Environmental effects of an impact-generated dust cloud: Implications for the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinctions, Science 219 (1983):287–289.
1. This figure was reported to J. T. Tanner by a professional bird collector who had shot every ivory-billed woodpecker in one Florida county.
2. I appreciate the use of this whimsy, borrowed from my colleague T. M. Smith.
3. The implications of the cyclic nature of small-scale forest dynamics were clearly elucidated by W. S. Cooper (in The climax forest of Isle Royale, Lake Superior, and its development. I, Botanical Gazette 55 (1)(1913):1–44; II, Botanical Gazette 55 (2)(1913): 115–140; and III, Botanical Gazette 55 (3)(1913):189–235). See also A. S. Watt’s classic paper, Pattern and process in the plant community, Journal of Ecology 35 (1947):1–22.
4. A. S. Watt, On the ecology of British beech woods with special reference to their regeneration. II, The development and structure of beech communities on the Sussex Downs, Journal of Ecology 13 (1925):27–73.
5. Idem, Pattern and process in the plant community, Journal of Ecology 35 (1947):1 -22.
6. A. F. Cornet et al., Water flows and the dynamics of desert vegetation stripes (pp. 327–345), in A. J. Hansen and F. DiCastri, eds., Landscape Boundaries: Consequences for Biotic Diversity and Ecological Flows (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1992).
7. Africa: S. B. Broaler and C. A. H. Hodge, Observations on vegetation arcs in the northern region, Somali Republic, Journal of Ecology 52 (1964):511–544; C. F. Hemming, Vegetation arcs in Somaliland, Journal of Ecology 53 (1965):57–68; L. P. White, “Brousse tigrée” patterns in southern Niger, Journal of Ecology 58 (1970):549–553; L. P. White, Vegetation stripes on sheet wash surfaces, Journal of Ecology 59 (1971):615–622. North America: C. Montaña, J. Lopez-Portillo, and A. Mauchamp, The response of two woody species to the conditions created by a shifting ecotone in an arid ecosystem, Journal of Ecology 78 (1990):789–798; C. Montaña, The colonization of bare areas in two-phase mosaics of an arid ecosystem, Journal of Ecology 80 (1992):315–327; A. F. Cornet et al., Water flows and the dynamics of desert vegetation stripes (pp. 327–345), in Hansen and DiCastri, Landscape Boundaries. Australia: R. O. Slatyer, Methodology of a water balance study conducted on a desert woodland community in central Australia (pp. 1526), in UNESCO Arid Zone Research 16: Plant-Water Relationships in Arid and Semi-arid Conditions (Paris: UNESCO, 1961); G. Pickup, The erosion cell—a geomorphic approach to landscape classification in range assessment, Australian Rangeland Journal 7 (1985):114–121; D. J. Tongway and J. A Ludwig, Vegetation and soil patterning in semi-arid mulga lands of eastern Australia, Australian Journal of Ecology 15 (1990):23–34.
8. C. Montaña, Las foraciones vegetales (pp. 167–198), in C. Montaña, ed., Estudio Integrado de los Recursos Vegetacion, Suelo YAqua en la Reserva de la Biosfera de Mapimi, (Xalapa: Instituto de Ecologia, 1988).
9. Idem, The colonization of bare areas in two-phase mosaics of an arid ecosystem, Journal of Ecology 80 (1992):315–327.
10. D. G. Sprugel, Dynamic structure of wave-generated Abies balsamea forests in northeastern United States, Journal of Ecology 64 (1976):889–911.
11. Y. Oshima et al., Ecological and physiological studies on the vegetation of Mt. Shimagaree. I, Preliminary survey of the vegetation of Mt. Shimagaree, Botanical Magazine of Tokyo 71 (1958):289–300. Quotation on p. 289.
12. Sprugel, Dynamic structure.
13. T. C. Whitmore, On pattern and process in forests (pp. 45–59), in E. I. Newman, ed., The Plant Community as a Working Mechanism (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1982); N. V. L. Brokaw, Gap-phase regeneration in a tropical forest, Ecology 66 (1985):682–687; idem, Treefalls, regrowth, and community structure in tropical forests (pp. 101–108), in S. T. A. Pickett and P. S. White, eds., The Ecology of Natural Disturbance and Patch Dynamics (New York: Academic Press, 1985); J. Silvertown and B. Smith, Gaps in the canopy: The missing dimension in vegetation dynamics, Vegetatio 11 (1988):57–60; R. A. A. Oldeman, Forests: Elements of Silvologyy (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1991).
14. H. H. Shugart, A Theory of Forest Dynamics: The Ecological Implications of Forest Succession Models (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1984); idem, Dynamic ecosystem consequences of tree birth and death patterns, BioScience 37 (1987):596–602.
15. G. S. Hartshorn, Tree falls and tropical forest dynamics (pp. 617 -638), in P. B. Tomlinson and M. H. Zimmermann, eds., Tropical Trees as Living Systems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).
16. F. Hallé, R. A. A. Oldeman, and P. B. Tomlinson, Tropical Trees and Forests (Hie-delberg: Springer Verlag, 1978).
17. Oldeman, in Forests, points out that forest dwellers in various parts of the world have a rich vocabulary to describe processes and patterns of tree falls, patches in forests, and the like. He notes chablis and volis in French, ryta in Finnish, and traa and loo in Dutch, as such terms. Oldeman speculates that the variety of grape used to produce chablis wine may have originated from a variety of Vitis vinifera found in small forest openings, or chablis in older French idiom.
18. R. B. Foster, Tachigalia versicolor is a suicidal neotropical tree, Nature 268 (1977): 624–626.
19. T. Hardy, Wessex Poems and Other Verses (New York: Harper, 1898).
20. H. H. Shugart, Terrestrial Ecosystems in Changing Environments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
21. F. H. Bormann and G. E. Likens, Pattern and Process in a Forested Ecosystem, (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1979). Quotation on p. 175.
22. T. C. Whitmore, On pattern and process in forests (pp. 45–59), in E. I. Newman, ed., The Plant Community as a Working Mechanism (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1982). Quotation on p. 45.
23. Tropical rain forests: A. Aubreville, La foret colonaile: Les forets de l’Afrique occidentale franjaise, Annales de l’Academie des Sciences Coloniale 9 (1938):1–245. Translated by S. R. Eyre, Regeneration patterns in the closed forest of Ivory Coast (pp. 41–55), in S. R. Eyre, ed., World Vegetation Types (London: Macmillan, 1991); E. W. Jones, Ecological studies on the rain forest of southern Nigeria. IV, The plateau forest of the Okumu forest reserve, Journal of Ecology 43 (1955):564–594, and 44 (1956):83–117; T. C. Whitmore, Change in time and the role of cyclones in the tropical rain forest on Kolombangara, Solomon Islands, Commonwealth Forestry Institute Paper 46 (1974); D. H. Knight, A phytosociological analysis of species-rich tropical forest on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, Ecological Monographs 45 (1975):259–284; G. S. Hartshorn, Tree falls and tropical forest dynamics (pp. 617–638), in P. B. Tomlinson and M. H. Zimmermann, eds., Tropical Trees as Living Systems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). Temperate forests: E. W. Jones, The structure and reproduction of the virgin forests of the north temperate zone, New Phytologist 44 (1945):130–148; H. M. Raup, Some problems in ecological theory and their relation to conservation, Journal of Ecology 52 (Suppl.) (1964):19–28; P. S. White, Pattern, process and natural disturbance in vegetation, Botanical Review 45 (1979):229–299; C. D. Oliver, Forest development in North America, Forest Ecology and Management 3 (1981):153–168; G. F. Peterken and E. W. Jones, Forty years of change in Lady Park Wood: The old-growth stands, Journal of Ecology 75 (1987):477–512. For review and discussion, see also Whitmore, On pattern and process.
24. O. Rackham, Mixtures, mosaics and clones: The distribution of trees within European woods and forests (pp. 1–20), in M. G. R. Cannell, D. C. Malcolm, and P. A. Robertson, eds., The Ecology of Mixed-Species Stands of Trees (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1992).
25. Shugart, Terrestrial Ecosystems.
26. It takes about forty years in most cases.
27. Temperate forest examples: Jones, Virgin forests; Rackham, Mixtures, mosaics and clones. Tropical forest examples: M. D. Swain and J. B. Hall, The mosaic theory of forest regeneration and the determination of forest composition in Ghana, Journal of Tropical Ecology 4 (1988):253–269.
28. J. T. Tanner related from his experience at the Singer tract in Louisiana that, in the early spring, the new leaves filling the south side of large tree canopies faster than elsewhere caused enough of a weight difference to pull over large trees that were rooted in the soft wet soil. He recalled occasionally hearing a crash from the fall of a giant canopy tree on still days, and the disquieting effect this event had on the singing of the birds (personal communication).
1. The living species are emperor penguin, Aptenodytes forsteri; king penguin, A. patagonicus; adelie penguin, Pygoscelis adeliae; gentoo penguin, P. papua; chinstrap penguin, P. antarctica; rockhopper penguin, Eudyptes chrysocome; macaroni penguin, E. chrysolophus; royal penguin, E. schlegeli; fiordland crested penguin, E. pachyrhynchus; erect-crested penguin, E. sclateri; Snare’s Island penguin, E. robustus; yellow-eyed penguin, Megadyptes antipodes; fairy penguin, Eudyptula minor; magellanic penguin, Spheniscus magellanicus; humboldt penguin, S. humboldti; African penguin, S. demersus; Galápagos penguin, S. mendiculus. J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, and J. Sargatal, eds., Handbook of the Birds of the World, vol. 1, Ostrich to Ducks (Barcelona: Lynx Edicions, 1992). There are eighteen species, if one recognizes the white-flippered variety of fairy penguin, Eudyptula albosignata, as a separate species.
2. Del Hoyo, Elliott, and Sargatal, Handbook of the Birds.
3. Alca pica is actually no longer in use as the scientific name of the razorbill (Alca torda).
4. Niche was formalized as a scientific concept in 1917: J. Grinnell, The niche relations of the California thrasher, Auk 34 (1917):364–382. The etymology of “niche” was discussed in P. M. Gaffney, The roots of the niche concept, American Naturalist 109 (1975):490, and D. L. Cox, A note on the queer history of “niche,” Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 61 (1980):201–202). These authors point out that in Grinnell’s time it was not a novel word, even in an ecological context. Thoreau, for example, used it without feeling the necessity for elaboration. Also see J. Grinnell, The origin and the distribution of the chestnut-backed chickadee, Auk 21 (1904):364–382, and idem, Geography and evolution, Ecology 5 (1924): 225–229.
5. Grinnell, Niche relations; and idem, Field tests and theories concerning distributional control, American Naturalist 51 (1917):115–128.
6. Grinnell, in Origin and distribution, also discussed many of the concepts of how animal distributions are controlled.
7. J. Grinnell, Presence and absence of animals, University of California Chronicles 30 (1928):429–450. Quotation on p. 429.
8. L. G. Ramensky, Vestnik opytnogo dela Sredne-Chernoz [Basic lawfulness in the structure of vegetation cover], excerpted in E. J. Kormandy, ed., Readings in Ecology, pp. 151–152 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1924); H. A. Gleason, The individualistic concept of plant association, Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 53 (1926):1–20.
9. F. E. Clements, Plant Succession: An Analysis of the Development of Vegetation (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institute, 1916); F. E. Clements, Plant Succession and Indicators (New York: Wilson, 1928).
10. The presence of bitter or poisonous pasture weeds indicates overgrazing. One can also determine the presence of mineral deposits from the location of species tolerant of various heavy metals.
11. For example, Whittaker and his colleagues felt that Grinnell’s concept emphasized the habitat sufficiently that niche was synonymous with habitat. They referred Grinnell’s niche as “the habitat or place niche.” R. H. Whittaker, S. A. Levin, and R. B. Root, Niche, habitat and ecotope, American Naturalist 109 (1973):479–482.
12. Autecological studies focus on the relations between individuals and their environment; synecological studies (which we shall discuss later) emphasize the relations between assemblages of multiple species or ecosystems and the environment.
13. J. Grinnell, The designation of birds’ ranges, Auk 44 (1927):322–325.
14. See F. C. James et al., The Grinnellian niche of the wood thrush, American Naturalist 124 (1984):17–47.
15. R. O. Erickson, The Clematis fremontii var. riehlii population in the Ozarks, Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 23 (1945):413–461.
16. Dolomite is a common mineral composed of calcium magnesium carbonate, CaMg(CO3)2 .
17. The data for this example are as tabulated by Erickson in 1945.
18. F. I. Woodward, Climate and Plant Distribution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
19. Many of these applications involve multivariate statistical procedures and large calibration data sets. The methodologies are complex and ecologists debate the most appropriate procedures to be used. Nonetheless, the methods all attempt to ascertain which measurable features of the environment most reliably predict where and when a given species will occur.
20. J. Rice, R. D. Ohmart, and B. W. Anderson, Bird community use of riparian habitats: The importance of temporal scale in interpreting discriminant function analysis (pp. 186–196), in D. E. Capen, ed., The Use of Multivariate Statistics in Studies of Wildlife Habitat (Fort Collins, Colo.: United States Department of Agriculture—Forest Service, 1981); idem, Turnovers in species composition of avian communities in contiguous riparian habitats, Ecology 64 (1983):1444–55; idem, Habitat selection attributes of an avian community: A discriminant function analysis, Ecological Monographs 53 (1983):263–290; idem, Limits in a data rich model: Modeling experience with habitat management on the Colorado River (pp. 7986), in J. Verner, M. L. Morrison, and C. J. Ralph, eds., Wildlife 2000: Modeling Habitat Relationships of Terrestrial Vertebrates (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986).
21. Rice, Ohmart, and Anderson, Turnovers in species composition; idem, Habitat selection attributes; B. W. Anderson, R. D. Ohmart, and J. Rice, Avian and vegetation community structure and their seasonal relationships in the lower Colorado River valley, Condor 85 (1983):392–405.
22. A similar species, the long-billed thrasher (Toxostoma longirostre) is found in southern Texas in the vicinity of Brownsville and has a small zone of overlap with the brown thrasher.
23. C. Elton, Animal Ecology (New York: Macmillan, 1927). Quotation on p. 63.
24. P. S. Giller, Community Structure and the Niche (London: Chapman and Hall, 1984).
25. J. R. Griesemer, Niche: Historical perspectives (pp. 231–240), in E. F. Keller and E. A. Lloyd, eds., Keywords in Evolutionary Biology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).
26. A. J. Lotka, Elements of Physical Biology (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1925); V. Volterra, Variations and fluctuations of the number of individuals in animal species living together [translation], in R. N. Chapman, ed., Animal Ecology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1926).
27. G. F. Gause, The Struggle for Existence (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1934). Quotation on p. 19. See also idem, The ecology of populations, Quarterly Review of Biology 7 (1932):27–46.
28. G. Hardin, The competitive exclusion principle, Science 131 (1960):1292–97.
29. J. Grinnell, Geography and evolution, Ecology 5 (1924):225–229; C. Elton, Animal Ecology (New York: Macmillan, 1927).
30. Both M. Williamson, in The Analysis of Biological Populations (London: Edward Arnold, 1972), and W. Arthur, in The Niche in Competition and Evolution (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1987), provide reviews of laboratory and field studies. Evidence for competition as a force working to structure the community was independently reviewed by T. W. Schoener, Field experiments on interspecific competition, American Naturalist 122 (1983):240–285, and J. H. Connell, On the prevalence and relative importance of interspecific competition: Evidence from field experiments, American Naturalist 122 (1983):661–696. They tabulated papers that claimed to investigate the outcome of experiments on competition among two or more similar species. Connell reviewed papers in six Journals (American Naturalist, Ecological Monographs, Ecology, Journal of Animal Ecology, Journal of Ecology, and Oecologia) published between 1974 and 1982. He identified evidence for competition in about 40 percent of the 527 experiments. Schoener conducted a broader review and had somewhat different criteria for his enumeration. See T. W. Schoener, Some comments on Connell’s and my reviews of field experiments on interspecific competition, American Naturalist 125 (1985):730–740. About 90 percent of the experiments Schoener tabulated demonstrated competition.
31. M. L. Cody, Competition and the Structure of Bird Communities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).
32. These are the alpha and beta parameters in the Lotka-Volterra equations. See R. Levins, Evolution in Changing Environments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968).
33. Gause, Struggle for Existence ;G. E. Hutchinson, Concluding remarks, Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology 22 (1957):415–427; J. M. Diamond, Assembly of species communities (pp. 342–344), in M. L. Cody and J. M. Diamond, eds., Ecology and Evolution of Communities (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975); and Cody, Competition andStructure of Bird Communities.
34. R. Levins, Extinction (pp. 77–107), in M. Gerstenhaber, ed., Some Mathematical Problems in Biology (Providence: American Mathematical Society, 1970).
35. R. H. MacArthur and R. Levins, The limiting similarity, convergence and divergence of coexisting species, American Naturalist 101 (1967):377–385.
36. P. S. Giller, Community Structure and the Niche (London: Chapman and Hall, 1984); J. Roughgarden, Resource partitioning among competing species—a co-evolutionary approach, Theoretical Population Biology 9 (1976):388–424; W. L. Brown and E. O. Wilson, Character displacement, Systematic Zoology 5 (1956): 48–64.
37. F. C. James et al., The Grinnellian niche of the wood thrush, American Naturalist 124 (1984):17–47.
38. R. H. Peters, A Critique for Ecology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
39. For example, M. Levandowsky, The white queen speculation, Quarterly Review of Biology 52 (1977):383–386; E. C. Pielou, Mathematical Ecology, 2nd ed. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1977).
40. R. H. Peters, Tautology in evolution and ecology, American Naturalist 110 (1977): 1–12; idem, A Critique for Ecology.
41. For example, H. V. Cornell and J. H. Lawton, Species interactions, local and regional processes, and limits to the richness of ecological communities—A theoretical perspective, Journal of Animal Ecology 61 (1992):1–12, note that “there seem to be numerous cases where there is open niche space.” They conclude that “many ecological communities should not be saturated.”
42. A. Hort, Enquiry into Plants and Minor Works on Odours and Weather Signs (Theophrastus, trans. Sir Albert Hort), vols. 1 and 2 (London: W. Heinemann, 1916); A. von Humboldt, Ideen zu einer Geographie der Pflanzen (Tubingen: F. G. Cotta, 1807; reprinted 1963 by Wissenschaftliches Buches, Darmstadt); L. R. Holdridge, Life Zone Ecology (San Jose, Costa Rica: Tropical Science Center, 1967); E. O. Box, Macroclimate and Plant Forms: An Introduction to Predictive Modeling in Phytogeography (The Hague: Dr. W. Junk, 1981).
43. J. B. Wilson, in Mechanisms of species coexistence: Twelve explanations for Hutchinson’s “Paradox of the Plankton”: Evidence from New Zealand plant communities, New Zealand Journal of Ecology 13 (1990):17–42, considers much the same issue: How do the species of a community persist without the occurrence of competitive exclusion? He finds that, for the flora of New Zealand, it is likely that environmental variation disequilibrates ecosystems before competition can manifest strong effects as a structuring force. Wilson (p. 32) states, “it seems that all plant communities are always in a state of change in response to climate.” M. Zobel, in Plant species coexistence—The role of historical, evolutionary and ecological factors, Oikos 65 (1992):314–320) also considers factors that structure plant communities. Zobel (p. 318) notes, “The diversity pattern of real plant communities does not suggest that the competitive exclusion of similar species can be the basis for explaining coexistence.”
44. C. Barbraud and H. Welmerskitch, Emperor penguins and climate change, Nature 411 (2001):183–186.
Epigraph. A. L. Kroeber, Karok Myths (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
1. E. R. Hall, Mammals of North America, vol. 2 (New York: John Wiley, 1981).
2. T. A. Vaughan, Ecology of living packrats (pp. 14–27), in J. L. Betancourt, T. R. Van Devender, and P. S. Martin, eds., Packrat Middens: The Last 40,000 Years of Change (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990).
3. W. G. Spaulding et al., Packrat middens: Their composition and methods of analysis (pp. 59–84), in Betancourt, Van Devender, and Martin, Packrat Middens.
4. R. B. Finley, Woodrat ecology and behavior and the interpretation of paleomid-dens (pp. 28–42), in Betancourt, Van Devender, and Martin, Packrat Middens. K. P. Dial and N. J. Czaplewski, Do woodrat middens accurately represent the animals’ environments and diets? The Woodhouse Mesa study (pp. 43–58), in Betancourt, Van Devender, and Martin, Packrat Middens. Betancourt and his colleagues provide a number of case studies. In Chapter 9 we discuss the use of hyrax middens in Jordan to date the changes in vegetation near the ancient city of Petra.
5. Theophrastus observed the positive relationship between altitude and latitude with respect to climate and vegetation. See A. Hort, Enquiry into Plants and Minor Works on Odours and Weather Signs [Theophrastus’ work translated by Sir Albert Hort], vols. 1 and 2 (London: W. Heinemann, 1916); and A. G. Morton, History of Botanical Science (London: Academic Press, 1981), for this and other observations of Theophrastus’ on vegetation and climate.
6. K. Cole, Late Quaternary zonation of the vegetation in the eastern Grand Canyon, Science 217 (1982):1142–45; idem, Past rates of change, species richness, and a model of vegetational inertia in the Grand Canyon, Arizona, American Naturalist 125 (1985):289–303.
7. H. J. B. Birks and H. H. Birks, Quaternary Palaeoecology (London: Edward Arnold, 1980); A. C. Ashworth, The response of beetles to Quaternary climate changes (pp. 119–128), in B. Huntley et al., Past and Future Rapid Environmental Changes: The Spatial and Evolutionary Responses of Terrestrial Biota (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1997).
8. Fossils in ocean: J. D. Hays, J. Imbrie, and N. J. Shackleton, Variations in the Earth’s orbit: Pacemaker of the ice ages, Science 194 (1976):1121–32; J. Imbrie et al., The orbital theory of Pleistocene climate: Support from revised chronology of marine18 O record (pp. 269–305), in A. Berger et al., eds., Milankovitch and Climate, pt. 1 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1984). Ice in glaciers: W. Dansgaard et al., A new Greenland deep ice core, Science 218 (1982):579–584; B. Saltzman, Climatic systems analysis, Advanced Geophysics 25 (1982):173–233.
9. The cycles of change were proposed by J. Croll, On the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit, and its physical relations to the glacial epoch, Philosophy Magazine 33 (1867):119–131, and derived mathematically by M. M. Milankovitch, Canon of Insolation and the Ice-Age Problem (Beograd: Koningliche Serbische Academie, 1941) [English translation by the Israel Program for Scientific Translation, published in 1969 by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C.].
10. J. Imbrie and J. Z. Imbrie, Modelling the climatic response to orbital variations, Science 207 (1980):943–953; A. Berger, Accuracy and frequency stability of the Earth’s orbital elements during the Quaternary (pp. 3–126), in Berger et al., Mi-lankovitch and Climate, pt. 1.
11. T. J. Crowley et al., Role of seasonality in the evolution of climate during the past 100 million years, Science 231 (1986):579–584.
12. A. Robock, Internally and externally caused climatic change, Atmospheric Science 35 (1978):1111–22.
13. Interpretation of the pollen in a lake deposit is complex. Currents stir sediments in some lakes, yet in other lakes one can clearly discern each year’s deposition. The various plants emit different amounts of pollen, so that given amounts indicate different levels of presence of different species. Pollen grains differ in size and in the distances that they travel. Thus, finding grains of pollen from one plant species indicates that it was found near the lake, whereas finding the grains of another species, whose pollen travels farther, indicates only it was in the region of the lake. Procedures to interpret pollen data correctly are constantly being improved and tested.
14. D. K. Grayson, Nineteenth-century explanations of Pleistocene extinctions: A review and analysis (pp. 5–39), in P. S. Martin and R. G. Klein, eds., Quaternary Extinctions (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984).
15. H. W. Longfellow, Evangeline, pt. 1.
16. R. G. West, Pleistocene Geology and Biology (London: Longman, 1977).
17. B. Huntley and H. J. B. Birks, An Atlas of Past and Present Pollen Maps for Europe: 0–13,000 Years Ago (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
18. R. G. West, Interglacial and interstadial vegetation in England, Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of London 172 (1961):81–89; idem, Pleistocene Geology and Biology; M. B. Davis, Pleistocene biography of temperate deciduous forests, Geoscience and Man 13 (1976):13–26; H. E. Wright, Jr., Quaternary vegetation history—Some comparisons between Europe and America, Annual Review of Earth Planetary Sciences 5 (1977):123–158; W. A. Watts, Europe (pp. 155–192), in B. Huntley and T. Webb III, eds., Vegetation History (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988); H. J. B. Birks, Holocene isochrone maps and patterns of tree-spreading in the British Isles, Journal of Biogeography 16 (1989):503–540; H. R. Delcourt and P. A. Delcourt, Quaternary Ecology: A Paleoecological Perspective (London: Chapman and Hall, 1991).
19. M. B. Davis, Pleistocene biography of temperate deciduous forests, Geoscience and Man 13 (1976):13–26; idem, Quaternary history and the stability of forest communities (pp. 132–153), in D. C. West, H. H. Shugart, and D. B. Botkin, eds., Forest Succession: Concepts and Application (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1981); idem, Outbreaks of forest pathogens in Quaternary history, Proceedings of the Fourth International Palynol Conference Lucknow 3 (1981):216–227; idem, Quaternary history of deciduous trees of eastern North America and Europe, Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 70 (1983):550–563; idem, Climatic instability, time lags, and community disequilibrium (pp. 269–284), in J. Diamond and T. J. Case, eds., Community Ecology (New York: Harper and Row, 1986).
20. B. Huntley, Europe (pp. 341–383), in Huntley and Webb, Vegetation History; Huntley and Birks, Atlas of Pollen Maps.
21. H. H. Shugart, R. Leemans, and G. B. Bonan, eds., A Systems Analysis of the Global Boreal Forest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
22. Shugart, Leemans, and Bonan, A Systems Analysis, provides a worldwide description of the species of the boreal forests.
23. T. Webb III, Glacial and Holocene vegetation history: Eastern North America (pp. 385–414), in Huntley and Webb, Vegetation History.
24. Tropical: T. C. Whitmore and G. T. Prance, eds., Biogeography and Quaternary History in Tropical America (Oxford: Oxford Science Publications, 1987); J. Haffer, Quaternary history of tropical America (pp. 1–18), in Whitmore and Prance, Biogeography and Quaternary History; T. van der Hammen, South America (pp. 307–340), in Huntley and Webb, Vegetation History.
Temperate: Delcourt and Delcourt, Quaternary Ecology.
Arctic: H. F. Lamb and M. E. Edwards, The Arctic (pp. 519–555), in Huntley and Webb, Vegetation History.
25. P. S. Martin and H. E. Wright, Jr., eds., Pleistocene Extinctions: The Search for a Cause (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967); Martin and Klein, Quaternary Extinctions.
26. D. S. Webb, Ten million years of mammal extinctions in North America (pp. 189210), in Martin and Klein, Quaternary Extinctions.
27. Martin and Klein, Quaternary Extinctions; R. N. Owen-Smith, Megaherbivores: The Influence of Very Large Body Size on Ecology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
28. See Martin and Klein, Quaternary Extinctions, for the various views and three summaries of the available data.
29. T. Nilsson, The Pleistocene (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verlag, 1983); E. Anderson, 1984, Who’s who in the Pleistocene: A mammalian beastiary (pp. 5–39), in Martin and Klein, Quaternary Extinctions.
30. One subspecies of the elephant found in moist forests is recognized by some as a species separate from the African elephant. This subspecies is smaller, narrower across the shoulders, and has a shorter gestation time.
31. V. J. Maglio, Origin and evolution of the Elephantidae, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (New Series) 63 (1973):1–149; L. D. Agenbroad, New World mammoth distribution (pp. 90–108), in Martin and Klein, Quaternary Extinctions.
32. Ibid.
33. Owen-Smith, Megaherbivores.
34. P. S. Martin and D. W. Steadman, Prehistoric extinctions on islands and continents (pp. 17–55), in R. D. E. McPhee, ed., Extinctions in Near Time (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 1999).
35. Ibid.
36. R. D. E. MacPhee and P. A. Marx, The 40,000 year plague: Humans, hyperdisease and first-contact extinctions (pp. 169–217), in S. Goodman and B. Patterson, eds., Natural Change and Human Impact in Madagascar (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997).
37. C. F. Baes, Jr., et al., Carbon dioxide and climate: The uncontrolled experiment, American Scientist 65 (1977):310–320; C. D. Keeling, The global carbon cycle: What we know and could know from atmospheric, biospheric and oceanic observations (pages II.3-II.62), in Proceedings of the CO2 Research Conference: Carbon Dioxide, Science, and Consensus (Springfield, Va.: NTIS, 1983).
38. F. I. Woodward, Stomatal numbers are sensitive to increases in CO2 from pre-industrial levels, Nature 327 (1987):617–618.
39. Idem, Plant responses to past concentrations of CO2 , Vegetatio 104/105 (1993): 145–155.
40. M. E. Mann, R. S. Bradley, and M. K. Hughes, Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: Inferences, uncertainties, and limitations, Geophysical Research Letters 26 (1999):759–762.
41. J. L. Sarmiento and M. Bender, Carbon biogeochemistry and climate change, Photosynthesis Research 39 (1994):209–234.
42. R. E. Dickinson, How will climate change? (pp. 206–270), in B. Bolin et al., eds., The Greenhouse Effect, Climatic Change, and Ecosystems (Chichester: John Wiley, 1986).
1. C. W. Stover and J. L. Coffman, The New Madrid earthquake of February 7, 1812, in Seismicity of the United States, 1568–1989 (Revised), U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1527 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1993).
2. The New Madrid earthquake of December 16, 1811, is the fifth largest in the contiguous United States; that of January 23, 1812, is the eighth largest.
3. A. C. Bent, Life Histories of North American Wood Warblers, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1953).
4. The species is described in J. J. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. 1, p. 323 (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1831). John Bachman and his family were indeed very close to John James Audubon, and Bachman’s daughters married two of Audubon’s sons.
5. C. S. Galbraith, Bachman’s warbler (Helminthophila bachmani) in Louisiana, Auk 5 (1888):323.
6. O. Widmann, The summer home of the Bachman’s warbler no longer unknown: A common breeder in the St. Francis River region of southeastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas, Auk 4 (1887):305–310.
7. The descendants of Dr. John Bachman still reside in Charleston. They pronounce their family name “Backman” (P. B. Hamel and S. A Gauthreaux, personnal communication).
8. A. T. Wayne, Bachman’s warbler (Helinthophila bachmanii) rediscovered in South Carolina, Auk 8 (1901):83–84.
9. R. V. Remsen, Was Bachman’s warbler a bamboo specialist? Auk 103 (1986):216-219).
10. H. M. Stevenson, The recent history of the Bachman’s warbler, Wilson Bulletin 84 (1972):344–347.
11. W. Brewster, Notes on the Bachman’s warbler (Helminthophila bachmanii), Auk 8 (1891):149–157; Wayne, Bachman’s warbler.
12. H. M. Stevenson, who had earlier collected over thirty of the birds, argued that this was at the time a relatively small dent in their continental population. He also saw the Bachman’s warbler as a species whose time had come (Stevenson, Recent history). F. W. Chapman, who along with W. Brewster collected about fifty Bachman’s warblers in the 1890s (Brewster, Notes), later founded the birding tradition known as the Christmas Bird Count. The event now involves 50,000 participants who count the birds found at 1,800 locations in the Western Hemisphere. The concept was initially proposed by Chapman as an antidote to the traditional “side hunt,” which by 1900 had only recently fallen into disfavor. The side hunt was a contest in which teams of “sportsmen” competed to see who could shoot the most birds and mammals on Christmas Day. Hundreds of nongame birds were killed in these events, and the scores were published in sporting magazines. While Chapman was strongly opposed to this sort of carnage, he remained a strong supporter of the collection of bird specimens by competent ornithologists as a necessity for taxonomic and biogeographic understanding of birds. (F. M. Chapman, A Christmas bird-census, in F. M. Chapman, ed., Bird Lore 14 (Harrisburg, Penn.: MacMillan Company, Dec. 1900).
13. The late J. T. Tanner saw several Bachman’s warblers in the Singer Tract in Louisiana while surveying for the ivory-billed woodpecker. He commented that his observations of the species were associated with canopy gaps (personal communication).
14. N. J. Collar et al., The Threatened Birds of the Americas. 3rd ed., pt. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992).
15. A species as rare as the Bachman’s warbler is often incompletely characterized, particularly with regard to ecological details. The descriptions here are consistent with historical accounts of the species and with conjectures initially discussed by Paul B. Hamel (personal communication). Hamel’s doctoral work involved a systematic but unsuccessful search for Bachman’s warblers over large areas of potential habitat in South Carolina. He also summarized historical accounts of the bird’s breeding habitat and related this information to the habitats of all the other breeding warblers of the region. See R. G. Hooper and P. B. Hamel, Nesting habitat of Bachman’s warbler—a review, unpublished, USDA/Forest Service, Southeastern Forest Experiment Station, Clemson, S.C.; P. B. Hamel and S. A. Gauthreaux, The field identification of Bachman’s warbler, American Birds 36 (1982):235–240.
16. This example, probably more than any other provided in this book, is speculative. For a creature as consistently rare as the Bachman’s warbler, the precise details of the species’ true habitat requirements and ecology probably will never be known.
17. H. H. Shugart, A Theory of Forest Dynamics: The Ecological Implications of Forest Succession Models (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1984); S. T. A. Pickett and P. S. White, eds., The Ecology of Natural Disturbance and Patch Dynamics (New York: Academic Press, 1985); D. C. Glenn-Lewin, R. K. Peet, and T. T. Veblen, eds., Plant Succession: Theory and Prediction (London: Chapman and Hall, 1992); H. H. Shugart and T. M. Smith, A review of forest patch models and their application to global change research, Climatic Change 34 (1996):131–153; H. H. Shugart, W. R. Emanuel, and G. Shao, Models of forest structure for conditions of climatic change, Commonwealth Forestry Review 75 (1996):51–64.
18. Karieva and Anderson found that 95 percent of the studies that they surveyed from leading ecological journals were conducted on plots of less than 1 hectare. Half used plots of 1 square meter or smaller. P. Karieva and M. Anderson, Spatial aspects of species interactions: The wedding of models and experiments (pp. 3550), in A. Hastings, ed., Community Ecology (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1988).
19. I have substituted “predictable landscape” for the term “quasi-equilibrium landscape” and “unpredictable landscape” for “effectively nonequilibrium landscape,” as used in other books. Shugart, Forest Dynamics; H. H. Shugart, Terrestrial Ecosystems in Changing Environments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). The average behavior of quasi-equilibrium landscapes is reasonably predictable, hence the name.
20. This section is abstracted from Lindenmayer’s very readable account of the life history and issues attending the Leadbeater’s possum: D. B. Lindenmayer, Wildlife and Woodchips: Leadbeater’s Possum—A Test Case for Sustainable Forestry (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1996). Detailed analyses of the possum’s habitat are given in D. B. Lindenmayer et al., The conservation of arboreal marsupials in the montane ash forests of the Central Highlands of Victoria, southeast Australia: I, Factors influencing the occupancy of trees with hollows, Biological Conservation 54 (1990):111–131; II, The loss of trees with hollows and its implications for the conservation of Leadbeater’s possum Gymnobelides leadbeateri McCoy (Marsupialia: Petauridae), Biological Conservation 54 (1990):133–145; III, The habitat requirements of Leadbeater’s possum Gymnobelides leadbeateri and models of the diversity and abundance of arboreal marsupials, Biological Conservation 56 (1991):295–315.
21. D. H. Ashton, Fire in tall open forests (wet sclerophyll forests) (pp. 339–366), in A. M. Gill, R. H. Groves, and I. R. Noble, eds., Fire and the Australian Biota (Canberra: Australian Academy of Science, 1981).
22. A. M. Gill, Post-settlement fire history in Victorian landscapes (pp. 77–98), in Gill, Groves, and Noble, Fire and the Australian Biota.
23. N. P. Cheney, Fire behaviour (pp. 151–175), in Gill, Groves, and Noble, Fire and the Australian Biota.
24. T. Foster, Bushfire: History, Prevention and Control (Sydney: A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1976).
25. D. B. Lindenmayer, Characteristics of hollow-bearing trees occupied by arboreal marsupials in the montane ash forests of the Central Highlands of Victoria, southeast Australia, Forest Ecology and Management 40 (1991):289–308.
26. D. B. Lindenmayer and R. C. Lacy, Metapopulation viability of arboreal marsupials in fragmented old-growth forests: Comparisons among species, Ecological Applications 5 (1995):183–199.
27. Shugart, Forest Dynamics; idem, Terrestrial Ecosystems.
28. In this section, a ratio of 1 to 50 for disturbance size to landscape size is used as the boundary between predictable and unpredictable landscapes.
29. Shugart, Forest Dynamics; idem, Terrestrial Ecosystems.
30. These changes also increase the degree of synchronization of disturbances, which alters the predictability of landscapes in much the same way as increasing the size of the disturbances.
31. S. R. Kessell, Gradient Modeling: Resource and Fire Management (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1979).
32. See R. M. May, Stability and Complexity in Model Ecosystems (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973).
33. This particular model is for Tasmanian vegetation, which is quite similar to that in Victoria. I. R. Noble and R. O. Slatyer, The use of vital attributes to predict successional changes in plant communities subject to recurrent disturbances, Vegetatio 43 (1980):5–21.
34. The details of the various simulations are given in S. W. Seagle and H. H. Shugart, Landscape dynamics and the species-area curve, Journal of Biogeography 12 (1985):499–508; Shugart, Terrestrial Ecosystems.
35. This concept is not new to ecology. A classic 1962 paper pointed out that smaller wildlife preserves, because of their limited areas and isolation, would eventually lose species. F. W. Preston, The commonness and rarity of species, Ecology 48 (1962):254–283.
1. M. M. Jaeger et al., Evidence of itinerant breeding in the red-billed quelea, Quelea quelea, in the Ethiopian Rift Valley, Ibis 128 (1986):469–482.
2. P. Ward, The migration patterns of Quelea quelea in Africa, Ibis 13 (1971):275–297; J. A. Wiens and M. I. Dyer, Assessing the potential impact of granivorous birds in ecosystems (pp. 205–266), in J. Pinowski and S. C. Kendeigh, eds., Granivorous Birds in Ecosystems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
3. Ibid.
4. P. Ward, Feeding ecology of the black-faced dioch, Quelea quelea, in Nigeria, Ibis 107 (1965):173–214; idem, The breeding biology of the black-faced dioch, Quelea quelea, in Nigeria, Ibis 107 (1965):326–349.
5. C. C. H. Elliott, The harvest time method as a means of avoiding quelea damage to irrigated rice in Chad/Cameroon, journal of Applied Ecology 16 (1979):23–35.
6. P. Ward, Manual of Techniques Used in Research on Quelea Birds (Rome: UNDP/ FAO, 1973); C. C. H. Elliott, The pest status of the quelea (pp. 17–34), in R. L. Bruggers and C. C. H. Elliott, eds., Quelea quelea, Africa’s Bird Pest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
7. W. C. Mullie, Traditional capture of red-billed quelea, Quelea quelea, in the Lake Chad basin and its possible role in reducing damage level in cereals, Ostrich 71 (2000):15–20.
8. J. P. Grime, Vegetation classification by reference to strategy, Nature 250 (1974): 26–31; idem, Evidence for the existence of three primary strategies in plants and its relevance to ecological and evolutionary theory, American Naturalist 111 (1977):1169–94; idem, Plant Strategies and Vegetation Processes (Chichester, England: John Wiley, 1979).
9. Disturbance has already been discussed as an agent that changes the pattern of spatial heterogeneity in landscapes (Chapter 4).
10. R. A. A. Oldeman and J. van Dijk, Diagnosis of the temperament of tropical rain forest trees (pp. 21–66), in A. Gomez-Pompa, T. C. Whitmore, and M. Hadley, eds., Rain Forest Regeneration and Management, vol. 6 (Paris: UNESCO, 1991); C. G. G. J. van Steenis, Rejuvenation as a factor for judging the status of vegetation types: The biological nomad theory (pp. 212–215), in Study of Tropical Vegetation, Proceedings of the Kandy Symposium (Paris: UNESCO, 1958).
11. J. Baird, Returning to the tropics: The epic autumn flight of the blackpoll warbler (pp. 51–62), in K. P. Able, ed., Gatherings of Angels: Migrating Birds and Their Ecology (Ithaca, N.Y.: Comstock Books, 1999); B. G. Murray, Jr., A critical review of the transoceanic migration of the blackpoll warbler, Auk 106 (1989):8–107. Murray argues for an alternative fall migration route for the blackpoll warbler that involves departure from a region somewhat farther south (between Cape Hatteras and northern Florida).
12. Much of this story has been pieced together in a six-year study by a team of ornithologists using ships at sea and a radar network with sites in Halifax, Nova Scotia; Cape Cod, Massachusetts; Bermuda; Wallops Island, Virginia; Miami, Florida; Antigua; Barbados; and Jamaica. See T. C. Williams et al., Autumnal bird migration over the western North Atlantic Ocean, American Birds 31 (1977):251–267; idem, Estimated flight times for North Atlantic migrants, American Birds 32 (1978):275–280. Birds and indications of the density of migrants aloft can be detected using radar weather stations.
13. The section that follows is based on K. P. Able, The scope and evolution of migration (pp. 1–11), in Able, Gatherings of Angels.
14. Timing cues are known as Zeitgebers (German for “time givers”) in the standard literature of avian physiology.
15. H. G. Wallraff, Does pigeon homing depend on stimuli perceived during displacement? I, Experiments in Germany, Journal of Comparative Physiology A139 (1980): 193–201.
16. Able, Gatherings of Angels.
17. R. Wiltschko and W. Wiltschko, Magnetic Orientation in Animals (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1995).
18. This remarkable capability is described in K. P. Able, A sense of magnetism, Birding 30 (1998):314–321.
19. Idem, How birds migrate (pp. 11–26), in Able, Gatherings of Angels.
20. K. Schmidt-Koenig and H.-J. Schlichte, Homing in pigeons with reduced vision, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 69 (1972):2446–47.
21. M. M. Walker et al., Structure and function of the vertebrae magnetic sense, Nature 390 (1997):371–376.
22. F. Papi, Pigeons use olfactory clues to navigate, Ethological and Ecological Evolution 1 (1989):219–231; K. P. Able, The debate over olfactory homing in pigeons, journal of Experimental Biology 199 (1996):121–124.
23. W. L. Donn and B. Naini, The sea-wave origin of microbaroms and microseisms, journal of Geophysical Research 78 (1973):4428–88; J. T. Hagstrum, Infrasound and the avian navigational map, journal of Experimental Biology 203 (2000):1103–11.
24. P. Berthold, Control of Bird Migration (London: Chapman and Hall, 1996).
25. Able, Gatherings of Angels.
26. R. T. Peterson, How many birds are there? Audubon Magazine 43 (1941):142. Peterson estimated the population of the forty-eight contiguous United States to be over 5.5 billion in the summer breeding season and close to 4 billion in the winter season.
27. J. Cartier, Voyage de jacques Cartier en 1534, ed. M. H. Michelant.
28. Schorger uses the low range of historical accounts of the sizes of species flocks to obtain this estimate. Some of the less conservative estimates would produce a still higher proportion.
29. Some observers have reported as much as a half a meter of bird droppings. Investigations into possible use of the guano to produce gunpowder components estimated the amounts in wagonloads.
30. J. J. Audubon, Ornithological Biography 1 (1841):323.
31. A. W. Schorger, The Passenger Pigeon: Its Natural History and Extinction (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973). There are recorded instances of single nests or nests of a few birds, but extremely large nestings were the norm for the species.
32. Ibid.
33. The smaller nesting groups appear to have been mostly young birds and may represent adherent behavior in immature individuals.
34. Table 2 (p. 57) in Schorger, The Passenger Pigeon, summarizes information from a number of sources.
35. W. Byrd, William Byrd’s Histories of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina, 1728; later ed. by W. K. Boyd (Raleigh: North Carolina Historical Commission, 1929). Quotation on p. 216.
36. The demise of the passenger pigeon appears to be a direct consequence of human actions. Nonetheless, it has been argued that an introduced disease of European pigeons could have caused the decline. Great numbers of birds were reported to have drowned in storms encountered by flocks traversing extensive water bodies. Pigeon roosts and nestings were worked over by several bird and mammal predators, but the flocking behavior is generally thought to have reduced the overall impact of predation.
37. Recall the second collection of Bachman’s warblers related in Chapter 5.
1. C. Maser et al., Natural History of Oregon Coast Mammals (Portland, Ore.: USDA/ Forest Service, 1981).
2. E. T. Seton, Lives of Game Animals (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1929).
3. G. C. Cline, Peter Skene Odgen and the Hudson’s Bay Company (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974).
4. D. R. Johnson and D. H. Chance, Presettlement overharvest of upper Columbia River beaver populations, Canadian journal of Zoology 52 (1974):1519–21; S. H. Jenkins and P. E. Busher, Castor canadensis, Mammal Species 120 (1979):1–9.
5. R. J. Naiman, C. A. Johnston, and J. C. Kelly, Alteration of North American streams by beaver, Bio Science 38 (1988):753–762.
6. See M. Kurlanski, Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World (New York: Walker, 1997).
7. R. Rudemann and W. J. Schoonmaker, Beaver dams as geological agents, Science 88 (1938):523–525.
8. Kurlanski, Cod.
9. J. E. DeKay, Zoology of New York, Natural History of New York, 1842 (available from the New York Public Library’s Research Library).
10. Kurlanski, Cod.
11. Ibid.
12. Dugmore, Romance of the Beaver.
13. Ibid.
14. Naiman, Johnston, and Kelly, Alteration of North American streams; R. J. Naiman et al., Beaver influences on the long-term biogeochemical characteristics of boreal forest drainage networks, Ecology 75 (1994):905–921.
15. W. Bartram, The Travels of William Bartram, 1791 (New York: reprint ed. Dover Publications, 1928); J. E. Bakeless, The Eyes of Discovery (New York: Dover Publications, 1961); J. F. Triska, Role of woody debris in modifying channel geomorphology and riparian areas of a large lowland river under pristine conditions: An historical case study, Internationale Vereinigung fur theoretische und angewandte Limnologie, Vehandlungen 22 (1984):1828–92.
16. R. I. E. Newell, Ecological changes in Chesapeake Bay: Are they the results of over-harvesting the American oyster, Crassostrea virginica? (pp. 536–546), in Understanding the Estuary: Advances in Chesapeake Bay Research, Proceedings, Chesapeake Research Consortium, 1988; M. G. McCormick-Ray, Oyster reefs in 1878 seascape pattern—Winslow revisited, Estuaries 21 (1998):784–800.
17. G. S. Brush, Rates and patterns of estuarine sediment accumulation, Limnology and Oceanography 34 (1989):1235–46.
18. Newell, Ecological changes; R. E. Ulanowicz and J. H. Tuttle, The trophic consequences of oyster stock rehabilitation in Chesapeake Bay, Estuaries 15 (1992):298–306; McCormick-Ray, Oyster reefs.
19. R. Rudemann and W. J. Schoonmaker, Beaver dams as geological agents, Science 88 (1938):523–525; R. L. Ives, The beaver-meadow complex, journal of Geomorphology 5 (1942):191–203.
20. C. S. Darwin, The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms with Observations on Their Habits (New York: Humboldt, 1887).
21. P. Coxon and S. Waldren, Flora of the Quaternary temperate stages of NW Europe: Evidence for large-scale changes (pp. 104–117), in B. Huntley et al., Past and Future Rapid Environmental Changes: The Spatial and Evolutionary Responses of Terrestrial Biota (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1997).
22. In fact, the African systems have been referred to as the “odd man out” among the tropical rain forests of the world. B. J. Meggers, E. S. Ayensu, and W. D. Duckworth, eds., Tropical Forest Ecosystems in Africa and South America: A Comparative Review (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1973).
23. P. J. Regal, Ecology and evolution of flowering plant dominance, Science 196 (1977):622–629.
24. This adaptation is reviewed in L. S. Adler, The ecological significance of toxic nectar, Oikos 91 (2000):409–420.
25. G. J. Keighery, Bird-pollinated plants in Western Australia (pp. 77–89), in J. A. Armstrong, J. M. Powell, and A. J. Richards, eds., Pollination and Evolution (Sydney: Royal Botanic Gardens, 1982).
26. R. J. Lambeck, The role of faunal diversity in ecosystem function (pp.129–148), in R. J. Hobbs, ed., Biodiversity in Mediterranean Ecosystems in Australia (Norton, New South Wales: Surrey Beatty, 1992).
27. N. E. Walker, Soil Microbiology (London: Butterworths, 1957).
1. By comparison, the ostrich (Struthio camelus) is the tallest living bird at 8 feet (2.5 m).
2. M. M. Trotter and B. McCulloch, Moas, men and middens (pp. 709–728), in P. S. Martin and R. G. Klein, eds., Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984).
3. B. Gill and P. Martinson, New Zealand’s Extinct Birds (Auckland: Random Century, 1991).
4. R. Duff, The Moa-Hunter Period of Maori Culture (Wellington: E. C. Keating [Government Printer], 1950).
5. C. J. Burrows, Diet of the New Zealand Dinornithoformes, Naturwissenschafften 67 (1980):S151; Trotter and McCulloch, Moas, men and middens.
6. Duff, in The Moa-Hunter Period, reports moa remains on top of tussock grass that dates to the year 230 (60 B.P.) using the 14 C-isotope dating technique. Other possible post-European records are discussed in A. J. Anderson, The extinction of moa in southern New Zealand (pp. 728–740), in Martin and Klein, Quaternary Extinctions; and Trotter and McCulloch, Moas, men and middens. Scientific debate persists regarding these records. It seems that the moa came tantalizingly close to surviving until European contact. The existence of any moas today is highly unlikely.
7. Anderson, Extinction of moa.
8. Ibid.
9. M. S. McGlone, Polynesians and the late Holocene deforestation of New Zealand (p. 43), in A. Ross, ed., Environment and People in Australasia, abstracts of the 52nd Congress of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
10. The location was Shag Mouth on the South Island. See H. D. Skinner, Archeology of Canterbury: II, Monck’s Cave, Records of the Canterbury Museum 2 (1924):151–162. Trotter and McCulloch, Moas, men and middens, cite several other examples.
11. A. J. Anderson, A review of economic patterns during the Archaic phase in southern New Zealand, New Zealand journal of Archeology 3 (1982):15–20.
12. E. Skokstad, Divining diet and disease from DNA, Science 289 (2000):530–531.
13. Anderson, in The extinction of moa, produced a “back-of-the-envelope" but conservative estimate of 100,000 to 500,000 moas in the 117 known moa-hunting sites. He based his numbers on the size of the sites and the density of moa bones found. He further noted that the largest sites are on a coastline that has been receding at the rate of 0.5 to 1 m per year, so some major butchering sites may not be included in his calculations. Anderson feels that the size of the moa population was probably in the tens of thousands. He later noted that the count on sites has risen to 300 and reiterated the role of overhunting in eliminating these species. A. J. Anderson, Prehistoric Polynesian impact on the New Zealand environment: Te Whenua Hou (pp. 271–283), in P. V. Kirch and T. L. Hunt, eds., Historical Ecology in the Pacific Islands (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). Also see idem, Mechanics of overkill in the extinction of New Zealand moas, journal of Archeological Science 16 (1989):137–151; and idem, Prodigious Birds: Moas and Moa-Hunting in Prehistoric New Zealand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
14. Technological human societies have demonstrated this fact by virtually eliminating the great whales of the oceans in about half the time postulated for the moa extinctions.
15. R. N. Holdaway and C. Jacomb, Rapid extinction of the moas (Aves: Diornithiformes): Model, test and implications, Science 287 (2000):2250–54.
16. Gill and Martinson, New Zealand’s Extinct Birds; Anderson, in Prehistoric Polynesian impact, puts the number of extinctions at thirty-seven species and subspecies. The inclusion of subspecies in the count would of course tend to produce a larger total.
17. Anderson, Prehistoric Polynesian impact.
18. R. Cassels, The role of prehistoric man in the faunal extinctions of New Zealand and other Pacific islands (pp.741–767), in Martin and Klein, Quaternary Extinctions.
19. S. L. Olson and H. F. James, Descriptions of Thirty-Two New Species of Birds from the Hawaiian Islands, pt. 1, Non-Passeriformes, Ornithological Monograph no. 45, American Ornithologists Union, Washington, D.C., 1991; H. F. James and S. L. Olson, Descriptions of Thirty-Two New Species of Birds from the Hawaiian Islands, pt. 2, Passeriformes, Ornithological Monograph no. 46, American Ornithologists Union, Washington, D.C., 1991. The two ornithologists have also developed an exceptional body of work on the fossil and recent birds of other Pacific islands.
20. Among them are several large flightless geese, five flightless rails, and several species of owls with long legs and short wings that were predators on small birds, and sixteen new and extinct species of songbirds (Passerines).
21. Steadman puts the number of extinct fossil birds at sixty species known only from bones, plus another twenty to twenty-five species that have become extinct in the last 200 years. D. W. Steadman, Prehistoric extinctions of Pacific Island birds: Biodiversity meets zooarcheology, Science 267 (1995):1123 -31.
22. S. L. Olson and H. F. James, The role of Polynesians in the extinction of the avifauna of the Hawaiian Islands (pp. 768–780), in Martin and Klein, Quaternary Extinctions; idem, Thirty-Two New Species, pt. 1, quotation on p. 7; James and Olson, Thirty-Two New Species, pt. 2.
23. This evocative term is credited to A. W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
24. J. S. Athens, Hawaiian native lowland vegetation in prehistory (pp. 248–270), in Kirch and Hunt, Historical Ecology.
25. Many of these plants would not have survived the frosts of temperate New Zealand, a fact that is likely to have reinforced Maori dependency on the native flora and fauna.
26. P. A. Cox and S. A. Banack, eds., Islands, Plants and Polynesians: An Introduction to Polynesian Ethnobotany (Portland, Ore.: Dioscorides Press, 1991). Several chapters outline both the use and the transportation of plants by Polynesians and are a useful summary of this topic.
27. P. V. Kirch, Changing landscapes and sociopolitical evolution in Mangaia, Central Polynesia (pp. 147–165), in Kirch and Hunt, Historical Ecology.
28. Ibid.
29. Consider the following as an example: The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, thought of saying “This is mine,” and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. Humanity would have been spared infinite crimes, wars, homicides, and murders if only someone had ripped up the fences or filled in the ditches and said: “Do not listen to this pretender! You are eternally lost if you do not remember that the fruits of the earth are everyone’s property and that the land is no-one’s property!” From Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, 1754. Translated by G. D. Cole (London: J. M. Dent, 1913), p. 207.
30. P. V. Kirch, Changing landscapes and sociopolitical evolution in Mangaia, Central Polynesia (pp. 147–165), in Kirch and Hunt, Historical Ecology. Quotation on p. 4.
31. Trotter and McCulloch, Moas, men and middens. Quotation on p. 723.
32. Gill and Martinson, New Zealand’s Extinct Birds. These records are not strictly comparable, since the determination of European extinctions includes a written historical record that is lacking in the Maori record. As will be discussed in the chapters that follow, Europeans have produced remarkable levels of extinctions across the planet.
33. The species appears to have been widespread on mainland New Zealand prior to Polynesian colonization and may have been eliminated across most of the country by the introduced Polynesian rat. R. N. Holdaway, New Zealand’s pre-human avifauna and its vulnerability, in M. R. Rudge, ed., Moas, man and climate in the ecological history of New Zealand, New Zealand journal of Ecology 12 (suppl.) (1989):11–25.
34. Martin and Klein, Quaternary Extinctions.
35. G. Singh, A. P. Kershaw, and R. Clark, Quaternary vegetation and fire history in Australia (pp. 23–54), in A. M. Gill, R. H. Groves, and I. R. Noble, eds., Fire and the Australian Biota (Canberra: Australian Academy of Sciences, 1981); P. H. Nicholson, Fire and the Australian aborigine—An enigma (pp. 55–76), in Gill, Groves, and Noble, Fire and the Australian Biota.
36. G. Barker, Prehistoric Farming in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
37. Archaic Indians: P. A. Delcourt, Goshen Springs: Late-Quaternary vegetation record for southern Alabama, Ecology 61 (1980):371–386; Australia: Nicholson, Fire and the Australian aborigine.
38. Steadman, Prehistoric extinctions.
39. E. G. Munroe, The size of island faunas (pp. 52–53), in Proceedings of the Seventh Science Congress of the Pacific, vol. 4, Zoology (Auckland: Whitcome and Tombs, 1953); R. H. MacArthur and E. O. Wilson, An equilibrium theory of insular zoogeography, Evolution 17 (1963):373–387; idem, The Theory of Island Biogeography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967).
40. Ibid.
41. This time interval should be the inverse of the turnover rate and is referred to in other contexts as the turnover time.
42. A readable review and summarization of the diversity of ideas on island biogeography is in R. J. Whitaker, Island Biogeography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
43. M. B. Bush and R. J. Whitaker, Non-equilibration in island theory of Krakatau, Journal of Biogeography 20 (1993):453–456; Whitaker, Island Biogeography.
44. The islands are called the Krakatau group after the name of the largest of the three islands.
45. While the colonization of Rakata is a massive “natural experiment” in the colonization and extinction processes of islands, it is far from a perfectly designed experiment. The island is difficult to survey. In 1927 a new volcano called Anak Karkatua started in the middle of the caldera created by the destruction of Krakatau. This volcanic island is active and periodically disturbs the surrounding islands, particularly affecting the forests.
46. Initial observations in 1884 from R. D. M. Verbeek, Krakatau (in French), pts. 1 and 2, pp. 396–461 (Batavia: Government Printing Office, 1886); see Whitaker, Island Biogeography, and elsewhere.
47. These were Thalassochorous species in one classification scheme of plant dispersal mechanisms. L. van der Pijl, Principles of Dispersal in Higher Plants (Berlin: SpringerVerlag, 1972).
48. Amenochorous species (ibid.).
49. Zoochorous species (ibid.).
50. Whitaker, Island Biogeography.
51. The warming of the average temperature of the ocean causes the waters to expand. This “thermal expansion” also causes the sea level to rise—even in the absence of additional water from the melting of glaciers on the terrestrial surface.
52. J. Weins, On understanding a non-equilibrium world: Myth and reality in community patterns and processes (pp. 439–457), in D. R. Strong, Jr., et al., eds., Ecological Communities: Conceptual Issues and the Evidence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). Weins points out that it is inappropriate to assume that a system is at equilibrium without actually demonstrating it to be so. Most observations of natural systems with any degree of duration illustrate a tendency for change, not the constancy implied by an equilibrium condition. Pregill and Olson point to the need to better understand both historical data and the effects of environmental change. G. K. Pregill and S. L. Olson, Zoogeography of West Indian vertebrates in relation to Pleistocene climate cycles, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 12 (1981):75–98.
53. J. D. Sauer, Oceanic islands and biogeographical theory: A review, Geographical Review 59 (1969):582–593.
54. Data on species turnover are difficult to collect. See J. D. Lynch and N. V. Johnson, Turnover and equilibria in insular avifaunas, with special reference to the California Channel Islands, Condor 76 (1974):370–384. The data are confounded by interactions between trophic levels. See G. L. Hunt, Jr., and M. W. Hunt, Trophic levels and turnover rates: The avifauna of Santa Barbara Island, Condor 76 (1974):363–369. The turnover of species may involve transient species that are not really colonists but simply alight on the island and then move elsewhere. See D. Simberloff, Species turnover and equilibrium island biogeography, Science 194 (1976):572–578.
55. M. H. Williamson, Island Populations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); idem, The MacArthur and Wilson theory today: True but trivial, Journal of Biogeography 16 (1989):3–4; idem, Natural extinction on islands, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, 325 (1989):457–468.
56. F. S. Gilbert, The equilibrium theory of island biogeography, fact or fiction? Journal of Biogeography 7 (1980):209–235.
57. Simberloff, Species turnover.
58. J. B. Foster, Evolution of mammals on islands, Nature 202 (1965):234–235; M. V. Lomolino, Body size of mammals on islands: The island rule reexamined, American Naturalist 125 (1985):310–316.
59. R. A. Reyment, Palaeontological aspects of island biogeography: Colonization and evolution of mammals on Mediterranean islands, Oikos 41 (1893):299–306.
60. B. Groombridge, ed., Global Biodiversity: Status of the Earth’s Living Resources (London: Chapman and Hall, 1992); D. W. Steadman, Human-caused extinctions of birds (pp. 139–161), in M. L. Reaka-Kudla, W. E. Wilson, and W. O. Wilson, eds., Biodiversity II: Understanding and Protecting Our Natural Resources (Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 1997).
61. Whitaker, Island Biogeography.
1. Bear cubs in North America: F. Galton, The first steps toward the domestication of animals, Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, N.S. 3 (1865):122–138); in China: J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (London: Macmillan, 1922). Monkeys, kinkajous and other creatures in South America: W. E. Roth, An introductory study of the arts, crafts, and customs of the Guiana Indians (pp. 25–745), in F. W. Hodge (transmitter), accompanying paper to the thirty-eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1916–1917 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1924). J. Serpell, Pet-Keeping and animal domestication: A reappraisal (pp. 10–21), in J. Clutton-Brock, ed., The Walking Larder (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), reviews the role of women in taming a variety of animals for pets in a wide range of cultures. Australian Aboriginals: G. Krefft, The Mammals of Australia (Sydney: Printer, 1871). New Guineans: M. Titcomb, Dog and Man in the Ancient Pacific (Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 1969).
2. K. Dennis-Bryan and J. Clutton-Brock, Dogs of the Last Hundred Years at the British Museum (NaturalHistory) (London: British Museum [Natural History], 1988).
3. A. P. Gray, Animal Hybrids: A Checklist with Bibliography (Bucks, UK: Farnham Royal, 1954).
4. C. Vilà et al., Man and his dog, Science 278 (1997):206–207; idem, Multiple and ancient origins of the domestic dog, Science 276 (1997):1687–89.
5. F. E. Zeuner, A History of Domesticated Animals (London: Hutchinson, 1963).
6. J. K. Gollan, Prehistoric dingo, doctoral thesis, Australian National University, 1982.
7. The earlier records (ca. 8500 B.P.) of dingoes in Australia are for isolated teeth, which may have dropped from an earlier level during excavation of the archeological site. S. J. Olsen, Origins of the Domesticated Dog: The Fossil Record (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1985), believes that the evidence is too meager for a definitive determination; subsequent scientists have largely upheld this opinion.
8. L. K. Corbett, Morphological comparisons of Australian and Thai dingoes: A reappraisal of dingo status, distribution and ancestry, Proceedings of the Ecological Society of Australia 13 (1985):277–291, favors the Thai dog as a source for the dingo; Gollan, Prehistoric dingo, leans to the Indian pariah dog.
9. Corbett, Morphological comparisons.
10. Idem, The Dingo in Australia and Asia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1995).
11. M. Titcomb, Dog and Man in the Ancient Pacific (Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 1969).
12. A. Newsome (personal communication), who conducted CSIRO studies on the biology and genetics of dingoes, relates that dingo pups taken into captivity after their eyes opened were always difficult to handle. None ever became tame enough to answer to commands.
13. R. A. Gould, Journey to Pulykara, Natural History 79 (1970):57–66.
14. M. W. Fox, The Wild Canids (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1975); Olsen, Origins of the Domesticated Dog.
15. Corbett, The Dingo in Australia and Asia.
16. Margaret W. Smith, personal communication.
17. P. Savolainen et al., Genetic evidence for an East Asian origin of domestic dogs, Science 298 (2002):1610–13.
18. References and other documentation for a variety of sites can be found in Olsen, Origins of the Domesticated Dog. D. F. Morey and M. Wiant, Early Holocene domestic dog burials from the North American Midwest, Current Anthropology 33 (1992):224–229, provide records of early dogs from New World archeological sites. Genetic evidence that the dogs of the New World originated from Asian domesticated wolves subsequently brought to the New World can be found in J. A. Leonard et al., Ancient DNA evidence for Old World origin of New World dogs, Science 298 (2002):1613–16.
19. The time scale in Figure 36 is based on the assumption that the wolf-like canids and the South American canids had Canis davisii as a common ancestor, as proposed by A. Berta, The Pleistocene bush dog, Speothus pacivorus (Canidae), from the Lagoa Santa caves, Brazil, journal of Mammalogy 65 (1984):549–559. The now-extinct Canis davisii appeared in the fossil record about 7 million years ago, so that 0.1 genetic distance unit = 2.5 million years.
20. Savolainen et al., Genetic evidence; Vila et al., Man and his dog; idem, Multiple and ancient origins.
21. See J. P. Scott, O. S. Elliot, and B. E. Ginsburg, Man and his dog, Science 278 (1997):205; and N. E. Federoff and R. M. Nowak, Man and his dog, Science 278 (1997):205, written in response to Vila et al., Multiple and ancient origins.
22. Olsen, Origins of the Domesticated Dog.
23. H. de Lumley, Une cabana de chasseuse acheuleens dans la grotte du Lazaret a Nice, Archeologia 28 (1969):26–33. J. Clutton-Brock, A Natural History of Domesticated Mammals (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), notes that L. R. Binford feels the animal remains are from a wolf den in the cave and unrelated to human ritual.
24. Clutton-Brock, A Natural History.
25. A possible exception would be if young tamed animals had been castrated to produce larger and/or more docile individuals. Clutton-Brock mentions this scenario as a possible means of determining the time of domestication of the reindeer. An analysis demonstrating such a situation would require relatively large sample sizes to demonstrate that the animal remains associated with humans were different from those of the local wild population.
26. J. Clutton-Brock. 1969. Carnivore remains from evacuations of the Jericho Tell (pp. 357–345). In: P. Ucko and G. W. Dimblely (ed.). The Domestication of Plants and Animals. Aldine Publishing, Chicago. Quotation on p. 340.
27. Olsen, Origins of the Domesticated Dog.
28. I. G. Plidochichko, Late Paleolithic Dwellings of Mammoth Bones in the Ukraine (Naukova Dumka, Kiev: Institute of Zoology of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, 1969).
29. Olsen, Origins of the Domesticated Dog.
30. See Clutton-Brock, A Natural History.
31. Clutton-Brock developed this list from an equivalent earlier list in Galton, The first steps toward the domestication of animals. Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, N.S. 3 (1865):122–138. The original Galton list is quoted in Chapter 11.
32. I. L. Mason, Evolution of Domesticated Animals (London: Longman, 1982).
33. D. E. MacHugh and D. G. Bradley, Livestock genetic origin: Goats buck the trend, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA 98 (2001):5382–84.
34. G. Luikart et al., Multiple maternal origins and weak phylographic structure in domestic goats, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA 98 (2001): 5927–32.
35. Clutton-Brock, A Natural History.
36. G. Luikart et al., Multiple maternal origins.
37. N. J. Wood and S. H. Phua, Variation in the control region sequence of the sheep mitochondrial genome, Animal Genetics 27 (1996):25–33.
38. Clutton-Brock, A Natural History.
39. E. Giuffra et al., The origin of the domestic pig: Independent domestication and subsequent introgression, Genetics 154 (2000):1785–91.
40. Clutton-Brock, A Natural History.
41. Ibid.
42. C. Vila et al., Widespread origins of domestic horse lineages, Science 291 (2001): 474–477.
43. G. Luikart et al., Multiple maternal origins.
44. Clutton-Brock, A Natural History.
45. Zeuner, A History of Domesticated Animals.
46. However, pigs are often reported as being nursed by humans in New Guinea and elsewhere.
47. Onagers have the humorous common name of “half-asses" to connote their intermediate size between horses and asses.
48. Zeuner, A History of Domesticated Animals.
49. J. Clutton-Brock, Carnivore remains from evacuations of the Jericho Tell (pp. 337345), in P. Ucko and G. W. Dimblely, eds., The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1969).
50. M. Hopf, Plant remains and early farming in Jericho (pp. 355–359), in Ucko and Dimbleby, Domestication and Exploitation.
51. Clutton-Brock, Carnivore remains.
52. Clutton-Brock, A Natural History.
53. P. L. Fall, C. A. Lindquist, and S. E. Falconer, Fossil hyrax middens from the Middle East: A record of paleovegetation and human disturbance (pp. 408–427), in J. L. Betancourt, T. R. Van Devender, and P. S. Martin, eds., Packrat Middens: The Last 40,000 Years of Change (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990).
54. J. F. Downs, Comments on the plains Indians cultural development, American Anthropologist 66 (1964):421–422.
55. E. West, The Way to the West (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995). Quotation on p. 22.
56. J. Doring, Kulturwandel bei den Nordamerikanischen Plainsindianern: Zur Rolle des Pferdes bei den Comanchen und den Cheyenne (Berlin: Dietrick Reimer, 1984).
57. A. Leopold, Game Management (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933).
58. A. R. Ek and R. A. Monserud, FOREST: Computer Model for the Growth and Reproduction Simulation for Mixed Species Forest Stands (Madison: University of Wisconsin, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, 1974); idem, Trials with program FOREST: Growth and reproduction simulations for mixed species even- or uneven-aged forest stands (pp. 56–73), in J. Fries, ed., Growth Models for Tree and Stand Simulation (Stockholm: Royal College of Forestry, 1974); J. W. Ranney, Edges of forest islands: Structure, composition, and importance to regional forest dynamics, doctoral dissertation (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1978).
59. For example, mountaintops are isolated ecosystems for many of the species found there, and are closer to being analogous to islands than agricultural landscapes.
60. A sustainable population in this sense would be a population with a high probability of surviving over a relatively long period.
1. H. V. Thompson, The rabbit in Britain (pp. 62–107), in H. V. Thompson and C. M. King, eds., The European Rabbit: The History and Biology of Successful Colonizer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
2. G. B. Corbet, Taxonomy and origins (pp. 1 to 7), in Thompson and King, The European Rabbit. Reumer and Sanders argue that the Phoenicians brought the species to North Africa. J. W. F. Reumer and E. A. C. Sanders, Changes in the vertebrate fauna of Menorca in prehistoric and classical times, Zeitschrift fur Sdugertierkunde 49 (1984):321–325.
3. C. Lever, Naturalized Mammals of the World (London: Longman, 1985).
4. Lagomorph is a general name for species in the mammalian order Lagomorpha, as rodent is for the order Rodentia. Lagomorphs differ from rodents in that the testes are located in front of the penis (as is the case in marsupials). Also, the second set of incisor teeth lie behind the first, not beside them as in rodents and other mammals. J. Clutton-Brock, A Natural History of Domesticated Mammals (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989).
5. J. Sheail, Rabbits and Their History (Newton Abbot, England: David and Charles, 1971).
6. Corbet reviewed the taxonomy of rabbits and related hares and found this distinctive behavior the only justification for distinguishing the genus Oryctolagus from other rabbits—notably the genus Silvalagus, which includes the cottontail rabbits of the New World. G. B. Corbet, A review of the classification in the family Leporidae, Acta Zoologica Fennica 174 (1983):11–15.
7. G. E. H. Barrett-Hamilton, A History of British Mammals, vol. 2 (London: Gurney and Jackson, 1912).
8. H. Nauchtsheim, Vom Wildtier zum Haustier (Berlin: Paul Parey, 1949).
9. J. E. C. Flux, World distribution (pp. 8–21), in Thompson and King, The European Rabbit.
10. Clutton-Brock, A Natural History; P. M. Rogers, C. P. Arthur, and R. C. Soriguer, The rabbit in continental Europe (pp. 22–63), in Thompson and King, The European Rabbit.
11. Flux, World distribution.
12. Thompson, The rabbit in Britain.
13. J. E. C. Flux and P. J. Fullagar, World distribution of the rabbit Oryctolagus cu-niculus on islands, Mammal Review 22 (1992):151–205.
14. For example, the first historical record on the Scilly Islands dates from 1176. Sheail, Rabbits and Their History.
15. Thompson, The rabbit in Britain.
16. Andrew Grey, Commissary to the colony, on May 1, 1788, listed five rabbits in An account of livestock in the settlement, Lever, Naturalized Mammals.
17. For a historical account of the rabbit in these early years, see Lever, Naturalized Mammals; and E. C. Rolls, They All Ran Wild: The Story of Pests on the Land in Australia (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1969). Quotation on p. 13.
18. A feral species is one that has reverted to the wild state after having been domesticated.
19. Reported in 1869 by James Calder, surveyor-general for Tasmania, Lever, Naturalized Mammals.
20. Rolls, They All Ran Wild.
21. G. C. Caughley, Analysis of Vertebrate Populations (New York: John Wiley, 1977).
22. H. M. Neave, Rabbit Calicivirus Disease Program Report 1: Overview of the Effects on Australian Wild Rabbit Populations and Implications for Biodiversity, a report of research conducted by participants in the Rabbit Calicivirus Disease Monitoring and Surveillance Program and Epidemiological Research Program, prepared for the Bureau of Rural Sciences, Canberra.
23. R. M. MacDowall, Exotic fishes: The New Zealand experience (pp. 200–214), in W. R. Courtenay, ed., Distribution, Biology, and Management of Exotic Fishes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984).
24. F. C. Kinsky, Amendments and additions to the 1970 annotated checklist of the birds of New Zealand, Notornis 27 (suppl.) (1980):1–3.
25. I. A. E. Atkinson and E. K. Cameron, Human influence on the terrestrial biota and biotic communities of New Zealand, Trends in Ecology and Evolution 8 (1993):447-451.
26. Steadman estimates that two thousand species of birds have been eliminated from the tropical Pacific by prehistoric human settlement. Over half of these were flightless rails, which are found in archeological remains on a number of islands and are presumed to have been endemic species. D. W. Steadman, Prehistoric extinctions of Pacific island birds: Biodiversity meets zooarcheology, Science 267 (1995):1123-31).
27. H. W. Simmonds, My Weapons Had Wings: The Adventures of a Government Entomologist Based in Fiji for Forty-Five Years (Auckland: Percy Salman, Wills and Grainger, 1964).
28. The initial Fijian range of the species was in the vicinity of two small islets, Bau and Viwa, which were used by sandalwood traders.
29. Simmonds’ autobiography contains a marvelous collection of stories told from the point of view of a colonial British expatriate traveling the South Pacific. This section is derived from his account, My Weapons Had Wings.
30. V. Vincek et al., How large was the founding population of Darwin’s finches? Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 264 (1997):111–118.
31. R. J. Whitaker, Island Biogeography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
32. Q. C. B. Cronk and J. L. Fuller, Plant Invaders (London: Chapman and Hall, 1995).
33. L. L. Manne, T. M. Brooks, and S. L. Pimm, Relative risk of extinction of passerine birds on continents and islands, Nature 399 (1999):258–261.
34. P. M. Vitousek et al., Introduced species: A significant component of human-caused global change, New Zealand journal of Ecology 21 (1997):1–16.
35. The disease in rabbits caused by the virus is called myxomatosis. The virus, discovered in Uruguay in 1896, was used to drastically reduce the European rabbit population in Australia, with initial releases in 1950.
36. P. F. A. Delille, Une methode nouvelle permettant a l’agriculture de lutter efficacement contre la pullulation du lapin, Contes Rendus de l’Academie Agricultural Frangais 39 (1953):638.
37. This account is from P. M. Rogers, C. P. Arthur, and R. C. Soriguer, The rabbit in continental Europe (pp. 22–63), in Thompson and King, The European Rabbit. The sums are based on 1992 values of the franc.
38. F. Fenner and F. N. Ratcliffe, Myxomatosis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965).
39. Arãgao’s proposal was made through Dr. A. Breinl, then director of the Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine in Townsville, Queensland.
40. Fenner and Ratcliffe, Myxomatosis.
41. C. K. Williams, Ecological challenges to controlling wild rabbits in Australia using virally-vectored immunocontraception (pp. 24–30), in R. M. Timm and A. C. Crabb, eds., Proceedings of the Seventeenth Vertebrate Pest Conference (Davis: University of California, 1996).
42. K. Williams et al., Managing Vertebrate Pests: Rabbits (Canberra: Australian Government Printing Office, 1995).
43. C. K. Williams, Development and use of virus-vectored immunocontraception, Reproduction, Fertility and Development 9 (1997):169–178.
44. The disease is also called rabbit calicivirus disease (RCD).
45. Williams et al., Managing Vertebrate Pests.
46. Neave, Rabbit Calicivirus Disease Program.
47. C. H. Tyndale-Biscoe, Virus-vectored immunocontraception of feral mammals, Reproduction, Fertility and Development 6 (1994):281–287.
48. C. K. Williams reviews several of these considerations in Development and use of virus-vectored immunocontraception; C. H. Tyndale-Biscoe discusses some of the social and ethical considerations in Vermin and viruses: Risks and benefits of viral-vectored immunosterilisation, Search 26 (1995):239–244.
49. L. Alphey et al., Malaria control with genetically manipulated insect vectors, Science 298 (2002):119–121.
50. M. Crichton, jurassic Park (New York: Ballantine Books, 1991).
1. F. Galton, The first steps toward the domestication of animals, Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, N.S. 3 (1865):122–138. Cited in J. Clutton-Brock, A Natural History of Domesticated Mammals (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), p. 10.
2. Homo erectus is generally credited with being the first hominid to use fire, but the evidence is rather difficult to interpret. For a general reference, see “Homo Erectus” in the 2003 Encyclopedia Britannica, or go to http://concise.britannica.com/ ebc/article?eu=392583.
3. H. Walter and S. Breckle, Ecological Systems of the Geobiosphere (Berlin: SpringerVerlag, 1985).
4. B. Keen, The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1959).
5. R. A. Anthes, Enhancement of convective precipitation by mesoscale variations in vegetative covering in semiarid regions, journal of Climate and Applied Meteorology 23 (1984):540–553.
6. Noah Webster (1799) from J. Kittredge, Forest Influences (New York: McGrawHill, 1948).
7. A. C. Becquerel, Des climats et de l’influence quexercent les sols boises et non boises, (Paris: Didot, 1853); see also F. B. Hough, Report upon forestry, Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Salem: SalemPress, 1878).
8. J. Shukla and Y. Mintz, Influence of land-surface evapotranspiration on the earth’s climate, Science 215 (1982):1498–1501; M. D. Schwartz and T. R. Karl, Spring phenology: Nature’s experiment to detect the effect of “green-up" on the surface maximum temperatures, Monthly Weather Review 118 (1990):883–890; M. M. Fennessy et al., The simulated Indian monsoon: A GCM sensitivity study, journal of Climate 7 (1994):33–41; B. P. Hayden, Ecosystem feedbacks on climate at the landscape scale, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, 353 (1998):5–18.
9. Hayden, Ecosystem feedbacks.
10. R. E. Dickinson and A. Henderson-Sellers, Modeling tropical deforestation: A study of GCM land-surface parameterizations, Quarterly journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 114 (1988):439–462.
11. The first experiment employed a relatively coarse spatial resolution GCM. It used a two-layered representation of the hydrology but did not include a plant canopy. A. Henderson-Sellers and V. Gornitz, Possible climatic impacts of land cover transformations, with particular emphasis on tropical deforestation, Climatic Change 6 (1984):231–258.
12. J. P. Malingreau and C. J. Tucker, Large-scale deforestation in the southern Amazon Basin of Brazil, Ambio 17 (1988):49–55.
13. Y. Xue and J. Shukla, The influence of land surface properties on Sahel climate: Part I, Desertification, journal of Climate 6 (1993):2232–45.
14. G. B. Bonan, D. Pollard, and S. L. Thompson, Effects of boreal forest vegetation on global climate, Nature 359 (1992):716–718.